You know that really annoying person who is videoing the gig with their camera phone to stick on Facebook when they get home? That's me. These days my TV is HD and my games console is HD, so it only makes sense that my phone – the device I use the most, day in and day out – should be HD too. Luckily, HD on smartphones is …

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Software

So the Lumia, and the Blackberry get negative comments because you have to install their software to get video off of the phone. No mention of the required iTunes infestation in the iPhone review. I also think more needs to be made of the hideous rolling shutter effect; it's very pronounced on the sample video from the Nexus and quite a few others.

All in all though a pretty good round up, I'd say the iPhone's lack of continuous autofocus works in its favour. Some of the other phones, particularly the Lumia seem to struggle with constantly refocusing on the wrong thing. The sensor size of these cameras means that apart from extreme close ups the depth of field will take care of most focus issues for you.

A bit disappointing not to see some gig footage shot with each phone. I find this is a huge test for a phone, flashing lights are tricky for almost all of them and the ability of the onboard microphone to deal with a really loud sound system should have been mentioned.

@Software

A very good point as iTunes is both pretty crap on Windows (my experience of friend's machines), and of course useless for Linux.

Why, oh why would you WANT a phone-specific access method?

Why can't those idiots provide USB mass storage access (even if defaulting to read-only) to allow you to copy off files on any sane computer system, including ones you don't have admin rights on to install infestations such as iTunes or Zune?

@fuzz

Video vs. Photo

Some still cameras with video use still camera algorithms for their video autofocus... phone cameras as well.

A still camera needs to focus very quickly, then grab the shot. Pretty obvious.

A video camera needs to do slower focus seeking, so that the process of focus seeking isn't obvious in the finished video. While professionals will usually use fixed focus in video anyway, dedicated camcorders will produce decent autofocused results. If you have a phone camera that's jumpy on video autofocus, that's a good sign the manufactuer/app is just recycling a still camera focusing algorithm.

It's not just that...

Real cameras, photo and video, have settled on using standard mass storage access. They also have standards for video file storage, photo file storage, etc.

When your phone doesn't follow these standard, it becomes something weird and hard to deal with. When it does, all the regular photo and video software out there works with it, no questions asked. So, as you way, why would you want any phone-specific storage method? There's no possible reason; no single company, not even Apple, trumps the momentum of the whole consumer photo and video industries on this.

Of course, Apple's probably trying to sell you something. Anyone who's not Apple and still doing this, even more shame on your, because there's no chance this isn't going to hard on users.

Gordon 10 is totally correct. You do not need iTunes (thank god) to transfer video or jpgs off an iPhone. However, Fuzz is correct in highlighting iTunes on Windows as a crappy piece of bloatware. That is why I always transfer photos off an iPhone on a computer specifically without an iTunes installation.

Not normally bothered by these reviews

No, I'm not. These group reviews are so light on details I normally like to find full reviews of each item across various sources and compare like that.

So why am I here and commenting now? Because in picking the Nokia Lumia 800 you have been as daft as a brush and I wanted to share that thought with you.

This review isn't about operating systems, ecosystems or form factors. It's meant to be about HD cameras. So you decision to not pick the Nokia N8-00 both astounds and disgusts me in equal measure. Yes it only records at 720p but it does have a standard HDMI mini output and includes a mini to full adapter in the box, and if you are running out of space on your (up to) 32GB microSD card and/or you've filled the internal disk while you are recording you can always plug in a USB memory stick and push your already recorded files over to that to free up more space. Then you can of course watch said HD recordings back from said memory stick via the phone while it is plugged into a HD TV and controlled via a suitable bluetooth device while seated on your sofa.

But then of course you know all of that. A more suspicious commentard might think that all of that was why you didn't choose the Nokia N8-00. But then I suspect that the publicly given reason will feature the word Symbian...

A cynical commentard's view

A link to purchase an N8 will get fewer clicks than the other phones because it's a year and a half old now and yes, it comes with Symbian Albatross^WAnna which can be annoying when the mood takes it but certainly not worthy of the bad press it gets.

From a strictly technical point of view it really should be included, especially after installing the camera software update from Betalabs or which comes with Symbian Belle (out this month).

N8?

Surely the Nokia N8 is the obvious choice for HD video? OK, it only records at 720p but the lens is excellent. With the new Symbian Belle update it's not a bad phone now either and the battery life is very good which does have a bearing.

What to buy if you don't want an N8?

And why I suspect its not reviewed, write video to external memory. Switchable focus modes on video, excellent glass, better sound than many camcorders etc etc. All in free and easy formats, throw it where you like. Kinda embarrassing for the competition.

Boiled down the death of Symbian is as result of Nokia taking the apple user lock in route and that sucks hard. I'm only buoyed by the hint of one final S^3 successor to the N8.

Crippling the most useful phone OS so soon to pander to the market that responds best to advertising is a crime.

Samsung S2

No sd card.

Similar to the posting about the complaint of requiring software for the Nokia but no mention of that lack on the iPhone. The iPhone has no replaceable sd card (OK - you can get bigger internal memory but then increase the price) and neither does the Nokia but it's only mentioned on the Nokia page.

Maybe you should have complained at the lack of an easily replaceable battery for those festival weekends to complete the set! :-)

Is it just because we can assume that everyone knows about the iPhones shortcomings? (i.e. iTunes software, fixed battery and no SD card)

aye

N8 for me too - unforgiveable omission...

Agree that overlooking the N8 here is criminal - it has by far the largest sensor and highest quality optics of all the phones on the market. Out of the box, there's large hyperfocal depth of field for video capture, but with the latest Camera app update, it can do macro/continuous a-f too. A win all round - omitting it is surely because of the Register's bias against Symbian?

iPhone as recommended? 'Nuff said about the whole article.

Why not? The 4S, like it or not, does a great job with photographs and video. Both tests and real world experience shows this to be true. Is it just because the article doesn't pander to your particular set of biases?

RE: why not?

Ah you said photographs? iPhone colors are crappy compared to my Arc pics, we concluded when the first iPhone 4S arrived at work, y'know.

4S is using the same chip you can find in my original Xperia Arc (non-S) and Apple still has no clue what to do with it, just look at those blown-out, over-saturated colors. The Sony Exmor chip hands over the picture ALREADY DIGITIZED, all Apple has to do is filter, compress, save etc and, of course, present it. Well, they screw it up.

Video, you said?

There are no biases here, I'm just trying to break through the bubble most Mactard wannabe journos live in - and with all due respect women scribblers are the worst "good enough" offenders.

Seriously, read this reasoning again:

"If the iPhone 5 doesn't have continuous autofocus, I won't be impressed. I could moan that you can't change exposure and white balance that came in handy on some of the other phones, but the iPhone is pretty accurate on the whole and its ease of use just outweighs these little niggles."

Ah, talk about iP5, only to give a pass to your review subject...

Riiiiight, shooting without autofocus is NOTHING...

...is this article a joke?

To me it sounds like just another wannabe journo (granted, likely some unemployed film/tv major) submitting her piece for a paycheck, sorry.

FYI generally speaking AVCHD is shitty codec and likely Sony knows that: they never enabled 1080p recording, rather stayed with a decent 720p but added auto-leveling audio etc so it's actually perfectly usable in a live concert, even even in front of woofers. A much better use for a camera phone than shitty quality, out-of-focus 1080p home videos if you ask me.

RE: why not? II.

Interesting tidbit: other aspects of this Exmor chip vis-a-vis Sony vs Apple show the same level of difference when it comes sophisticated implementation eg the chip has great low-light specs (for a phone, I mean) yet the lack of proper light kills iPhone pics immediately vs 1+ year old Arc works just fine after sunset in a park and I bet Arc S is even better... I really think Apple still needs to learn how to handle the image that comes out of the chip, that's all.

RE: So what...

Errr, what... what is this nonsense?

I have an Arc for almost a year now and I have no idea what are you talking about, my Arc is FAR THE BEST camera phone on the market even today, including indoor photos. I have a DSLR for days when I want to take HQ photos of my wife and kid but, as with everybody else, phone is always with me so that's my run-and-gun camera and I pay attention when I replace my phone.

FYI on my Arc there are four different flash settings: "Auto", "Fill flash", "Off" and, as usual on every flash-enabled device, a "Red-eye reduction" setting - take your pick.

I can imagine that "Auto" might produce something like you said but then 1. use some other setting and 2. I am not too big on flash, I hate that ugly, unnatural flash-lit look of those pics so normally I rather let the camera crank up the ISO and keep flash off - it's pretty cool when your phone sports a CMOS with such great low-light specs. ;)

Watch out for crap Android bugs

I discovered an annoying bug in the stock camera app on my Droid. It turns out that if you have geolocation selected in the app, but you happen to have the GPS turned off, then it just drops the pictures on the floor. It looks like it's taking pictures, but nothing ends up on the SD card.

really?

Not on my S2 it doesnt. I have geolocation powered down permanently using easy battery saver (a wonderful app). My pictures took just fine when I enabled geolocation in the stock camera app. Ive not even flashed the beast - gingerbread 2.3.4

Finally!

All well and good

But what are they like as bloody phones? Can you actually make and receive calls with them with decent reception?

It's a phone for fuck's sake - te-le-phone. An instrument that converts voice and other sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and that receives and reconverts waves into sound signals. They don't need fancy additions and gadgets IMO - talk about over-egging the pudding.

You point woud be valid were this a general review of smartphones. It's not though. The title of the piece is "Eight... HD camera smartphones" Clues in the title young fella-me-laddo...

One more thing; it's not a telephone. It's a smartphone. That means that it's *more* than a a te-le-phone. It actually the natural successor to the ill-fated PDA, with telephony being a feature and the 'phone' nomenclature coming more from the form factor.

They all suck

For a quick capture on a spur of the moment I guess they are useful. But they all pretty much suck at HD video (or any video for that matter). If you want to capture HD video you need a dedicated camera. End of story.

Hmm jittery

Firstly it is not all about resolution, I have some 27 year old Beta camera recordings which still look quite presentable. Used DV for about 5 years and I now use HDV.

Secondly - how about some image stabilisation, the shake on these videos was so distracting, sheer weight stopped this on my first camera, latest has optical image stabilisation.

Last holiday I forgot my video camera one day and had to use my phone for about 5 minutes of material.

Here goes, colour, not great, slightly shakey, but frame rates was the issue, that phone did AFAIR 720 x 480 30FPS, now UK TV uses 25FPS (50 fields) so I had the fun of using 720x480/30p mixed with 1440x1080/50i.

Lets say better than nothing but rather jarring, especially as with HDV there is no reencoding except at transitions.

So these are good for party and emergency use, but if you are serious, or even just want a watchable holiday video you still need a proper video camera - and a lot are cheaper than the phones.

DLNA

You say some of the phones "requiring adaptors to deliver a hi-res AV out"... I don't know about the others but the HTC supports DLNA. So as long as your TV is compatable, you can stream the HD video to your TV over your WiFi network without purchasing anything else. That's how I watch my phone's videos at home.

In the mosh pit?

Gripes

I think what gripes me most is that the superimposed images show off things you just can't do with a camera that has a tiny sensor, shallow depth of field on any object that is more than 3" from the camera lens, ridiculous amounts of dynamic range that you would only get close to capturing with the assistance of some Singh Ray or LEE ND Grads or perhaps at a pinch with a colour negative film in the hands of someone who knows what their doing with the right soft light... And then of course the squeaky clean non-JPEG smeared high ISO appearance...

yea

I'd agree that a small compact might be better but by the time you have set up the shot the kids will have finished unwrapping their pressie or scoffing their chocolate bar etc. They do have their uses as a quick snap device - all the better if they can actually produce a reasonable printable piccy.